Kahney’s Korner: Lessons from having my MacBook stolen

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Leander Kahney had a scare when a backpack full of computing power was stolen.
Leander Kahney had a scare when a backpack full of computing power was stolen.
Photo: Cult of Mac

I want to spare you some of the pain that recently greeted me after a night out with friends. I returned to my car to find the rear window smashed out and my backpack gone. It contained my brand new MacBook and iPad.

The worry, of course, was whether my backpack was in the hands of tech-savvy crooks, so I prepared for the worst.

What I learned over a long weekend about my own approach to security is the subject of this week’s Kahney’s Korner.

After the break-in, I realized I’d done a few things right, and a few things wrong. I had two-factor authentication turned on, and had logged my devices with Find My iPhone, which allowed me to remotely wipe them. Trouble is, the thief never connected them to the Internet.

That made me worried about what I’d done wrong. For starters, leaving my backpack in the car.

In addition, the login password for the MacBook was turned off. Although I went to great pains to create a complex 21-character password, I allowed my kids to turn it off while they did their homework. Tired of logging in with the long password, the young Kahneys disabled it. Easy for them, and for any hacker who got their hands on the machine.

So I had to spend a very long weekend doing triage. It was a huge pain in the ass, but you can learn from my mistakes.

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